A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
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of being independent.”
Crisp, Rev. Robert S., Pastor of the Methodist Church, Moncton, New Brunswick, is one of two brothers (Robert S. and James Crisp), who came to the Maritime provinces during the years 1871 and 1872, for the purpose of entering the Methodist ministry. Robert S., the elder of the two brothers and subject of this sketch, was born near Norwich, England, July 1st, 1848. He is the eldest son of James and Sarah Crisp, and is descended on his mother’s side from a junior branch of the Walpole family, some members of which occupied important positions in English politics during the reigns of George I. and George II. Many interesting traditions and relics, as well as valuable estates in Norfolk, still remain in this branch of the family. After receiving a general education in the public schools and in a private school of his native place, Mr. Crisp took theological studies under the direction of the Rev. Thomas G. Keeling, M.A., well known in certain divinity circles in the old country, purposing to offer himself for the Methodist ministry in connection with the English conference. A letter from the late Rev. Dr. Geo. Scott, urging him to go to America, decided him, however, in an early purpose he had formed of some time offering himself for the work under the control of the (then) Eastern British American conference, which he accordingly did in October, 1871, and on arriving in this country was appointed assistant to the Rev. F. W. Harrison, in a large country charge on the banks of the St. John river, in New Brunswick. Among other charges held by Mr. Crisp, have been Charlottetown, P.E.I., Chatham, Portland, and Moncton, N.B. Mr. Crisp’s especial aim has been to adapt himself as far as possible to the actual needs and tastes of the people among whom he has laboured in word and doctrine. As a result of this he has been successful in his work, and the church to which he belongs has been extended and consolidated in his various charges. He is also well known as a lecturer and enthusiastic temperance worker. In the latter capacity he has sometimes aroused much opposition. He was chosen to deliver an address of welcome at the annual meeting of the Sons of Temperance in Moncton in 1886, and as a result of remarks he made regarding the appointment of a man who was transacting business in liquor, to the office of justice of the peace in a town in which the Scott Act had been adopted, he was sued for libel with damages laid at $10,000. Rev. Mr. Crisp, however, kept on steadily in his course, and soon after the local government appointed a commission to enquire into the charges preferred. Mr. Crisp is still a young man (1887), and hopes to have very many years of labour before him in various departments of Christian work.
Harris, Joseph A., Barrister-at-law, Moncton, New Brunswick, is the fifth son of Michael S. Harris, and was born at Moncton, New Brunswick, on the 23rd of August, 1847. He received his educational training at the Mount Allison Academy, New Brunswick, and in the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, England. After leaving school he followed mercantile pursuits until 1872, when he began the study of law in the office of the late Albert J. Hickman, barrister, Dorchester, New Brunswick, and continued here until September of 1873, when he entered Harvard University, Massachusetts. In this university he remained for over two years. He then returned to his native province, and entered the office of the Hon. John J. Fraser, Q.C., J.S.C., at Fredericton, New Brunswick, as a student, and continuing there until October, 1876, when he was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of New Brunswick. In 1877 Mr. Harris became a member of the Suffolk bar in Massachusetts, and practised his profession in Boston until 1885, when he returned to Moncton, was re-sworn in a barrister, and is now in active practice in that town being counsel for several leading corporations. On the 29th of April, 1879, Mr. Harris was married at Warren, Rhode Island, U.S., to Isabel F. E. Brown, daughter of the late Hon. Charles Frederick Brown, of Rhode Island.
Hunt, Henry George, St. Catharines, Ontario, was born on the 16th of June, 1846, at Sheerness, Kent, England. He is the eldest son of Harvey Hunt, of Poole, Dorsetshire, England, and Sarah Tucker, of Horne, in the same county, daughter of W. Tucker, the Swedish and Danish consul at Poole. Henry George Hunt, the subject of this sketch, spent the first six years of his life in Sheerness, and in 1852, his father having received an appointment in her Majesty’s dockyards at Portsmouth, the family removed to that place. Here Henry received his education at the Grammar School of that town, and at the age of fourteen years he went before the Civil Service commission and passed a most creditable examination, being first out of one hundred and thirteen for a scholarship in the Royal College of Naval Architecture at Portsmouth. At the end of a three years’ course in this institution he was in 1863 promoted from the lower to the upper college. Two years later he was appointed by the Imperial government to the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s service in the East Indies, and left England on the 29th of September, 1865, in H.M.S. Octavia, fifty-one-gun frigate, commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir James Hilyar, K.C.B., for India. This ship on her way out called at Madeira, Sierra Leone, Ascension, St. Helena, and remained some weeks at each of these ports, arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the early part of 1866, and remained there about a month, visiting Port Natal, Simonstown, and other places. He afterwards visited Zanzibar, the island of Madagascar, etc. In 1867 he sailed for Bombay, and entered upon his duties with the Peninsular and Oriental Company. During the years 1867–8-9 he visited every stores depot owned by this company in the east, among them being Suez, Aden in the Red Sea; Muscat in the Persian Gulf; Kurachee, Bombay, Goa, Pondicherry, Madras, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Canton in China; and Yokahama in Japan. In the summer of 1869 he was taken down with the jungle fever, having caught a severe cold when out shooting with some brother officers in Ceylon, and when it was discovered to be a very serious case, he was conveyed to the Madras Hospital, where, after a hard fight, he pulled through. He then resigned his appointment and started for home by the long sea-route round the Cape of Good Hope, having taken passage in H.M.S. Lyra. On his arrival in England he was appointed landing waiter in her Majesty’s customs, and was stationed at Portsmouth. He remained in this service until the fall of 1871, when the Hon. Mr. Gladstone’s “free breakfast-table policy” caused a great reduction in the staff of customs officers at the out-ports, and Mr. Hunt, with many other officers around the coast of Great Britain, received a few hundred pounds cash as compensation for the loss of their commissions, and left the service. In the spring of 1872 Mr. Hunt was married to Eleanor Fanny, eldest daughter of Arthur Charles Lansley, of Andover, Hants; and in the fall of the same year he sailed for America to visit a wealthy uncle who lived in Alabama. Having taken his passage via Quebec, on his westward journey, he was induced to stay over at St. Thomas, Ontario, and take a position in the Canada Southern Railway Company. Not having realized his expectations, he abandoned this service, and for the next two or three years he was engaged in various pursuits, such as bookkeeper for Rich & Mitchell, wholesale druggists, St. Thomas, and for Messrs. Kain, of the same place. In 1877 he bought out a jobbing business, and in the following year sold this out and removed to St. Catharines, to take charge in that city of the extensive piano-forte business of A. & S. Nordheimer, of Toronto. On this branch being closed, Mr. Hunt received the appointment of city ticket agent for the Great Western Railway Company in St. Catharines; and since he has extended his business of ticket-selling so that he now represents every railway and steamboat line in Canada and the United States, and the extensive tourist system of Thomas Cook & Sons, of New York and London, England. Mr. Hunt has been prominently identified with the Masonic order for many years. In 1866, while at the Cape of Good Hope, on his way to India, he was initiated in Royal Alfred lodge of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, a very aristocratic lodge, Prince Alfred, after whom it was named, with many officers of the military and civil service, being members. While in St. Thomas he was instrumental in forming a company that built one of the finest Masonic halls in Canada. He established Elgin lodge, and was its first worshipful master; was also first principal of De Warrene chapter of Royal Arch Masons, and assisted in establishing Nineveh Council of Royal and Select Masters, and was one of its Illustrious masters. Since his residence in St. Catharines he has taken an active part in city improvements, and helped in getting an electric light company established, and is now the manager and secretary-treasurer of this company. Mr. Hunt has also been for the past five years manager of the Grand Opera House; and is manager of Hendrie & Co’s. cartage agency for the collection and delivery of freight for the Grand Trunk Railway. He represents the Baltimore & Ohio Telegraph Company, the Commercial (Mackay-Bennett) Cable Company, and all the transatlantic steamboat companies, as well as the Canadian Pacific Telegraph Company, and Dominion Express Company. Mr. Hunt is a strong supporter of the Episcopal church. He has been twice married, his first wife having died a few years after his arrival in Canada, leaving two children. Six years